The Innovation Show

Our guest was the Harvard Business Review editor until 2011, when today's book changed her life. She graduated from Cornell University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. In 2011 she was named by Ashoka as one of the world’s most influential and inspiring women. She is also an incredible author and has co-authored with the late Clayton Christensen. She is here to discuss the concepts of one of my favourite books, which also changed my life's direction. We welcome the co-author of How Will You Measure Your Life? Karen Dillon. Find Karen here: https://www.karendillon.net

The genesis of today’s book centred on a question posed years ago to “disruptive technologies” coauthor Clayton Christensen: where do disruptive business models come from? Christensen’s best-selling books, The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution, conveyed important insight into the characteristics of disruptive technologies, business models, and companies. Today’s book emerged from an eight-year collaborative study in which our guest sought a richer understanding of disruptive innovators —who they are and the innovative companies they create. The project’s primary purpose was to uncover the origins of innovative—and often disruptive— business ideas. Most of us think creativity is an entirely cognitive skill; it all happens in the brain. A critical insight from our research is that one’s ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind but also a function of behaviours. This is good news for us all because it means we can improve our creative impact if we change our behavi

More than a decade ago, Mark Johnson, SAP’s Henning Kagermann, and Clayton Christensen hashed out the principles of business model reinvention in the pages of the Harvard Business Review. Essentially, a business model can be broken down into four distinct elements: A value proposition 2. Resources  3. Processes, 4. A profit formula  This means in practice that the new and different must be separated and even protected from the tried and true. As Mark says, “To play a new game on a new field requires a new game plan.” —Clayton M. Christensen It is a pleasure to welcome the author of multiple titles, a great friend of the show, and the co-author of that 2008 paper Clay mentioned, a Top 50 HBR article of all time, Reinventing Your Business Model; Mark W. Johnson.

Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn’s “Disrupting Class” is an unsettling title for a book about the schooling process. The title conveys multiple meanings. The principal message is that disruption can usefully frame why schools have struggled to improve and how to solve these problems. We welcome back the author of “Disrupting Class, How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns: Michael B Horn Find Michael here: https://michaelbhorn.com 00:00:00 Intro 00:03:02 Clayton Christensen Relationship 00:05:53 The Why of Disrupting Class 00:08:14 What Does The Theory Have to Say? 00:10:37 Intrinsic v Extrinsic Motivation and Jobs Theory 00:14:47 Interdependence and Modularity 00:22:15 Organisational Design and Authority 00:28:40 Train people how to think not what to think 00:29:37 Model of Disruptive Innovation 00:32:42 Non-Consumption Contexts 00:37:42 Resistance from the Status Quo 00:41:02 Cramming 00:46:06 RCA, Vacuum Tubes, Sony and Transistors 00:49:09 Incubation Outside the Cor

Some essential lessons in "Seeing What’s Next" relate to disruptive innovations. Four critical lessons are: 1. Disruption is a process, not an event. 2. Disruption is a relative phenomenon. What is disruptive to one company may be sustaining to another company. 3. Different or radical technology does not equal disruptive. 4. Disruptive innovations are not limited to high-tech markets. Disruption can occur in any product or service market and can even help explain competition among national economies. Today’s book shows how to use the theories of innovation developed in The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution—and introduces some new ones as well. The book argues that it is possible to predict which companies will win and which will lose in a given situation--and provides a practical framework for doing so. We are joined by a long-time collaborator, friend and student of both Clayton Christensen, and he is a long-time friend of this show, Scott D. Anthony The HBR article Scott mentioned:

The Innovator’s Dilemma summarised a theory that explains how, under certain circumstances, the mechanism of profit-maximising resource allocation causes well-run companies to get killed.  The Innovator’s Solution, in contrast, summarises a set of theories that can guide managers who need to grow new businesses with predictable success—to become the disruptors rather than the disruptees—and ultimately kill the well-run, established competitors. To succeed predictably, disruptors must be good theorists. As they shape their growth business to be disruptive, they must align every critical process and decision to fit the disruptive circumstance. Skate to Where the Money Will Be by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Matthew Verlinden https://hbr.org/2001/11/skate-to-where-the-money-will-be Of waves and ripples: Disruption theory’s newest critic tries to make a splash by Michael E. Raynor, https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/innovation/disruptive-innovation-theory-lepore-response.html

The paper I wanted to share today aims to provide a common language about the research process that helps management scholars spend less time defending the style of research they have chosen and build more effectively on each other’s work. I felt this series on Clayton Christensen’s work and theories would be incomplete without this episode. It is a great pleasure to welcome the co-author of that paper and a person who has built on this work considerably, Paul Carlile. Papers mentioned in the episode are listed here: https://www.bu.edu/questrom/profile/paul-carlile/

Our guest’s award-winning research introduces a new perspective on value creation and competition when industry boundaries break down in the wake of ecosystem disruption. His two books, The Wide Lens and Winning the Right Game, have been heralded as landmark contributions to strategy literature. Clayton Christensen described his work as “Path-breaking”, and Jim Collins has called him “One of our most important strategic thinkers for the 21st century.” It is a pleasure to welcome Ron Adner.  Find Ron here: https://ronadner.com

In 2003, media companies and newspapers were in free fall, when American newspapers earned only a tiny percentage of revenue from digital. The Deseret News and Deseret Digital Media were the envy of others, with more than 50% of the organisation’s combined net income coming from digital sources. All this was a little more than three years after a former Harvard Business School professor took over the company. How did he do it? He developed his strategy thanks to his work with Clayton Christensen and employed the research to recalibrate how Deseret is organised and does business. Today, he has recalibrated his life and reallocated his resources to causes other than the business world. More about that shortly. First and foremost, he is with us to pay tribute to his friend, share how his theories helped him perform a spectacular turnaround in the media industry and share insights from his book, “Dual Transformation, How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future.” It is a rare treat and abso

We covered the Innovator’s Dilemma with Matthew Christensen in the first part of this series, but we did not cover Chapter 7 of the Innovator’s Dilemma,that chapter Is entitled “Discovering New and Emerging Markets” It opens as follows: “Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed: Suppliers and customers must discover them together. Not only are the market applications for disruptive technologies unknown at the time of their development, they are unknowable. The strategies and plans that managers formulate for confronting disruptive technological change, therefore, should be plans for learning and discovery rather than plans for execution. This is a crucial point to understand because managers who believe they know a market’s future will plan and invest very differently from those who recognize the uncertainties of a developing market.” You may know those to be the words of Clayton Christensen, but what you may not know is that this concept of discovery-driven growth stems from the work of a very special fr

In part 2 of our series to honour the work, life and theories of Clayton Christensen, Joseph Bower unpacks that famous HBR article, "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave" This article spawned the book, "The Innovator's Dilemma" Joe Bower s the father of "Resource Allocation theory" included in his 1970 groundbreaking book, Managing the Resource Allocation Process. He has been a leader in general management at Harvard Business School for over five decades where he is the Donald K. David Professor Emeritus. He was Clayton Christensen’s doctoral thesis adviser and worked with Clay to develop and stress-test his theories. Just some of the topics covered in this episode: 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:46 Managing Resource Allocation 00:02:57 Dissertation Supervisor for Clayton Christensen 00:04:11 Traits of Great Leaders 00:06:19 Resource Allocation 00:08:44 Group Decision Making 00:26:56 The Human Element of Change 00:46:46 Advice for Changemakers and Leaders 00:51:25 Getting People to Change Their Mind 00:56:29 Fin

The logical, competent decisions of management that are critical to the success of their companies are also the reasons why they lose their positions of leadership.” How can executives simultaneously do what is right for the near-term health of their established businesses while focusing adequate resources on the disruptive technologies that ultimately could lead to their downfall? The Innovator's Dilemma!!! Clayton Christensen fathered the “theory of disruptive innovation”, but he also fathered wonderful people who have built on his pioneering work.  We are honoured to be joined by one such pioneer. The apple does not fall far from the tree; he is offspring in mind and body and spirit we welcome Co-Founder, CEO, and Managing Partner of Rose Park Advisors, Matt Christensen, welcome to the show.

Today’s book takes a fresh perspective on what it takes for people to flourish in the workplace. Our guest suggests that when we focus on neurodiversity, we respect people’s deeper drives and motivations, and then companies will naturally achieve better results as a side effect. One thing we must keep in mind is that neurosignatures shouldn’t be thought of as static. Our neurosignatures change throughout the day. When I get out of bed in the morning, my testosterone neurosignature is very high. But by evening, it’s almost nonexistent. I don’t want to conquer my goals at eight at night; I want to watch Netflix and chill. For those wondering what a neurosignature is, we’ll soon explore “neurosignatures,” a unique mix of four key brain chemicals that strongly affects your personality and how you process stress and information. Today’s book highlights the basic fact that we need more thought diversity and that people’s motivations differ very much. There is so much In this book, and I am delighted to we

The story of language is the story of humanity; the new understanding of language that our guests outline in this book radically revises our conception of ourselves. In today’s book, our guests outline a revolutionary perspective that overhauls almost everything we thought we knew about language. We will hear how the game of charades reveals deep insights into how language works. We’ll hear how our brain can improvise linguistic ‘moves’ at an astonishingly rapid rate. We’ll hear how languages are in continual flux, how people without a common tongue can rapidly create a language from scratch, and why it’s likely that language has been independently reinvented countless times. We will realise how the creation of language is not only important in itself – it also changed the nature of evolution. It’s a pleasure to welcome the authors of The Language Game- How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World., Nick Chater and Morten H. Christiansen Find Nick here: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/ni

Senior leaders often want to know how they can build an environment to allow innovation to thrive. In order to do that, they first need to realise that business activities live on an uncertainty continuum - that we call the Explore-Exploit Continuum - and that creating new growth engines and managing existing business(es) are on opposite ends of this continuum. A better understanding of the Explore-Exploit Continuum will help executives and innovation teams put in place the right investment and management processes, the required skill set and culture to explore new business ideas as successfully as they exploit current businesses. An upcoming info session for the Growth Accelerator Program mentioned by Alex: https://www.imd.org/event/innovation/2023-01-24/masterclass-information-session/

As a cognitive device, STORY is so woven into our language and thought process that it is inextricable. Since thought is at the heart of one’s life experience, it’s your stories—the ones you tell yourself habitually, for days, weeks, months, years, and even decades, that either move you closer to your goals and ideals or tragically, push them further away. Building upon his prior works and leaning upon advanced theories of thought and meta-cognition, Grunburg produces an epic finale and at the same time, introduces an innovative and simplified behaviour change model already impacting the coaching and behaviour change professions. Find Martin here: https://thehabitfactor.com

It is a pleasure to welcome back the author of “Banks and Fintech on Platform Economies: Contextual and Conscious Banking “ Paolo Sironi, welcome to the show Evolving bank business models on outcome economies, resolving the tension between information and communication, which requires overcoming the fears of abandoning the shore of established operational models, and all the products and services rendered. In the dark of the new digital, financial and economic normal, only a crisp and clear vision can guide all stakeholders in the transformation effort. Furthermore, the regulators need to be aligned on the new digital strategies that will ferry the whole industry to more sustainable shores. What is needed is a business map and a compass to guide the navigation. The map is the Banking Reinvention Quadrant (BRQ), and the compass pointing to the North Star of higher business value is the theory of Financial Market Transparency (FMT)

Co-author of "Eat Sleep Innovate", Paul Cobban, shares the importance of reframing your competitive set and the concept of MOJO Meetings and Wreckoon. Singapore's DBS Bank has been voted the world’s best bank for five years in a row! It wasn’t always like that. Today’s guest remembered his first day at DBS in 2009: when he asked his taxi driver to take him to DBS, the driver said, “Ah, DBS—Damn Bloody Slow,” referring to the notoriously long queues that plagued its ATMs. We are joined today on Innovation Bytes by the man who led the transformation from Damn Bloddy Slow to the best bank five years in a row. He is also the co-author of Eat Sleep Innovate with a friend of the Show, Scott D Anthony. He is going to share some nuggets about the transformation It is a pleasure to welcome Paul Cobban. Find Paul here: https://paulcobban.com/book/

The work of Clayton Christensen changed my worldview and, ultimately, my life. I have been lining up all his co-authors to celebrate his life and share his theories. We have been interviewing each of these great thinkers over the last few months and into 2023. We will bring you each of those episodes in chronological order of his book releases. It includes Matt Christensen, Clay's son and CEO of Rose Park Advisors, Rita McGrath, Joseph L. Bower, Michael Raynor, Scott D. Anthony Hal Gregerson, Taddy Hall Bob Moesta, Michael B. Horn Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon. Coming Jan 23, 2023

While the mechanistic work mindset has spurred huge growth and riches for many, it’s an approach that has masked a fundamental truth: Rather than a machine, organizations are living, dynamic systems that can’t be programmed. Instead, they thrive through relationships, adaptive structures, diverse networks of people, the spaces they occupy, the tools they use – and so, so much more. For our guests– the answer to a better world lies in The Nature of Work Mindset: a new language inspired by forests and other elements of the natural world. This new vocabulary helps us to perceive work in a more dynamic way, to move away from the ‘organization as machine’ model and towards an ‘organization as organism’ view.   We welcome Paul Miller and Paul Miller.   Find Paul and Shimrit here: https://digitalworkplacegroup.com